mon 14/07/2025

Opera Reviews

Eugene Onegin, Bolshoi Opera, Royal Opera House

David Nice

Nobody knows any real happiness, and human kindness is rarely to be found, in Dmitri Tcherniakov's Bolshoi production of Tchaikovsky's "lyric scenes" - the most disciplined and real piece of operatic teamwork I've seen ever to come from the Russian establishment.

Read more...

Stravinsky, The Rake's Progress, Glyndebourne

Edward Seckerson

Thirty-five years on and this is still as much David Hockney’s Rake as it is Stravinsky’s or W H Auden’s. How rarely it is that what we see chimes so completely and utterly with what we hear. The limited palette of colours, the precisely etched cross-hatching, the directness and the cunningly conceived elements of parody – am I talking about Hockney or Stravinsky? Two great individualists in complete harmony. So why the disconnection?

Read more...

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Rattle, Royal Albert Hall

alexandra Coghlan

In 1860 Wagner sent a full score of his recently published Tristan und Isolde to Berlioz, inscribing it: “To the great and dear composer of Roméo et Juliette, from the grateful composer of Tristan und Isolde.” The bonds between these two works go far beyond emotion, as last night’s inspired piece of programming from Simon Rattle and the Orchestra of the Age of...

Read more...

Francesca da Rimini, Opera Holland Park

David Nice

They're having a laugh at Holland Park, surely: offering 700 pay-what-you-like tickets to hook newcomers on the wonderful world of opera, and then serving up a Pythonesque staging of an immoveable Italian dinosaur.

Read more...

Hänsel und Gretel, Glyndebourne

Edward Seckerson Alice Coote and Lydia Teuscher in Cardboard City

Glyndebourne’s Hänsel und Gretel comes in a large cardboard box, with plain brown wrapper, duct-tape and a barcode. There’s a public health warning, too: sugar and spice and all things nice come at a price. The evil witch Rosina Sweet-Tooth is nothing more, nothing less than rabid consumerism masquerading as a smart lady in a pink two-piece suit. Yes, Laurent Pelly’s 2008 staging was/ is the first environmentally aware Humperdinck. It had to come. For revival read recycle.

Read more...

Simon Boccanegra, Royal Albert Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

First to crane his head anxiously in Plácido Domingo's direction was the leader of the Royal Opera House orchestra, Peter Manning. Then came an agitated look from conductor Antonio Pappano. Soprano Marina Poplavskaya clutched Domingo's chest as if to feel for a heart beat. "Is he ok?" we all mouthed. We had just seen Domingo slam his wizened Simon Boccanegra to the ground, dead. The music had rumbled to a close. The Prommers' applause had erupted.

Read more...

Die Meistersinger at the Proms, BBC Four

David Nice

Two birthday parties kept me away from the Albert Hall yesterday (though I'll confess that in the end I treacherously skipped the second and stayed glued to the TV's delayed relay). That, and a slight fear that the concert performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg from the BBC Proms couldn't match up to the original Welsh National Opera production of the decade.

Read more...

The Duchess of Malfi, ENO, Punchdrunk

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

It's tough being a critic.

Read more...

La Traviata, Royal Opera

Ismene Brown

Of course she isn't now the watchful, learning 29-year-old who premiered Covent Garden’s opulent, sensually loaded production in 1995, but Gheorghiu’s varicoloured voice - a rainbow of tears, sobs, scoops, warbling runs and top notes that seem to rack her body with pain - has if anything added more colours since then (including a less fetching...

Read more...

I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw The Sky, Theatre Royal Stratford East

David Nice

John Adams thinks his and poet June Jordan's fantasia on love in a time of earthquake flopped at its 1995 Berkeley premiere for two main reasons.

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Too Much, Netflix - a romcom that's oversexed, and over...

A thirtysomething American woman with wavering self-confidence, a tendency to talk too much and a longing for married bliss with Mr...

Sir Brian Clarke (1953-2025) - a personal tribute

Brian Clarke died on 1 July 2025, after a long illness. He was one of the most original British artists of our time – wide-ranging, original...

Album: The Near Jazz Experience - Tritone

As the name suggests, the Near Jazz Experience owe a huge musical debt to jazz, but that’s not the full story by any means. For a start, the...

Music Reissues Weekly: Beggars Arkive - Gary Numan's 19...

Tubeway Army’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric” hit the top of the UK single’s chart in the last week of June 1979. It stayed there for four weeks. Its...

Album: Wet Leg - moisturizer

War, pestilence, famine, death. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill of them all. So what better time to visit the genuinely sunny uplands...

Nye, National Theatre review - Michael Sheen's full-blo...

The National Health Service was established 77 years ago this month. Resident doctors are about to strike for more pay, long waiting lists for...

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Tate Modern review - glimpses of anothe...

It took until the last room of her exhibition for me to gain any real understanding of the work of...